Colonel Trethaway forgot that the heats of life had passed, and swinging a three-legged stool, danced nimbly into the fray.  A couple of mounted police, on liberty, joined him, and with half a dozen others safeguarded the man with the wolf-skin cap.

Fierce though it was, and noisy, it was purely a local disturbance.  At the far end of the bar the barkeepers still dispensed drinks, and in the next room the music was on and the dancers afoot.  The gamblers continued their play, and at only the near tables did they evince any interest in the affair.

“Knock’m down an’ drag’m out!” Del Bishop grinned, as he fought for a brief space shoulder to shoulder with Corliss.

Corliss grinned back, met the rush of a stalwart dog-driver with a clinch, and came down on top of him among the stamping feet.  He was drawn close, and felt the fellow’s teeth sinking into his ear.  Like a flash, he surveyed his whole future and saw himself going one-eared through life, and in the same dash, as though inspired, his thumbs flew to the man’s eyes and pressed heavily on the balls.  Men fell over him and trampled upon him, but it all seemed very dim and far away.  He only knew, as he pressed with his thumbs, that the man’s teeth wavered reluctantly.  He added a little pressure (a little more, and the man would have been eyeless), and the teeth slackened and slipped their grip.

After that, as he crawled out of the fringe of the melee and came to his feet by the side of the bar, all distaste for fighting left him.  He had found that he was very much like other men after all, and the imminent loss of part of his anatomy had scraped off twenty years of culture.  Gambling without stakes is an insipid amusement, and Corliss discovered, likewise, that the warm blood which rises from hygienic gymnasium work is something quite different from that which pounds hotly along when thew matches thew and flesh impacts on flesh and the stake is life and limb.  As he dragged himself to his feet by means of the bar-rail, he saw a man in a squirrel-skin parka lift a beer-mug to hurl at Trethaway, a couple of paces off.  And the fingers, which were more used to test-tubes and water colors, doubled into a hard fist which smote the mug-thrower cleanly on the point of the jaw.  The man merely dropped the glass and himself on the floor.  Vance was dazed for the moment, then he realized that he had knocked the man unconscious,—­the first in his life,—­and a pang of delight thrilled through him.

Colonel Trethaway thanked him with a look, and shouted, “Get on the outside!  Work to the door, Corliss!  Work to the door!”

Quite a struggle took place before the storm-doors could be thrown open; but the colonel, still attached to the three-legged stool, effectually dissipated the opposition, and the Opera House disgorged its turbulent contents into the street.  This accomplished, hostilities ceased, after the manner of such fights, and the crowd scattered.  The two policemen went back to keep order, accompanied by the rest of the allies, while Corliss and the colonel, followed by the Wolf-Skin Cap and Del Bishop, proceeded up the street.